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A better pizza dough by Alice Waters

On Saturday I tried this pizza dough recipe from Alice Waters 'The art of simple food', I know it's heresy but for my money it's better than Saint Jamie's, which has been my reference recipe to date. I think it must be something to do with the 'biga' (I think that's what you call the yeast concoction ) that you make to start off with.
two other tips:
Firstly,get the biggest heaviest oven tray you have and put it on the bottom shelf of the oven when you turn the oven on, you want it to get really hot.
Secondly, ignore anything I have said before, make your pizzas on a well floured board and only prepare them immediately before they are due to go into the oven. If you leave it too long they will go soft and wont slide off the board easily.
we all made our own very personal choices ( tomato sauce, anchovies, courgettes, slow cooked red onions, Salami, Parma ham, black olives, basil, oregano, courgettes and of course buffalo mozarella) and then tucked into them in front of the X-Factor ... lovely

(tomato sauce recipe below)



Ingredients


2 teaspoons dry yeast

1/2 cup lukewarm water

1/2 cup unbleached white flour

3 1/4 cups unbleached white flour

1 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup cold water

1/4 cup olive oil


Method


Stir together yeast and warm water until yeast is dissolved. Add 1/2 cup flour and stir well. Allow the mixture to sit until quite bubbly, about 30 minutes.

In another bowl, mix together the unbleached white flour, whole wheat flour, and salt. Stir this into the yeast and flour mixture and add cold water and olive oil.

Mix thoroughly by hand. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured board and knead until the dough is soft and elastic, about 5 minutes. If the dough is too wet and sticky, add more flour, but only enough to form a soft, slightly sticky dough.

The dough is the right texture when it pulls away from the sides of the bowl of the mixer, but still adheres to the bottom. You are looking for a very soft, slightly moist dough.

Put the dough in a large bowl, cover, and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size, about 2 hours. For an even better-tasting and more supple dough, let the dough rise slowly overnight in the refrigerator. Remove from the fridge 2 hours before shaping.

Divide the dough into four and form each piece into a nice, smooth ball. Allow the dough balls to rest at room temperature, for an hour or so.

Preheat the oven to its maximum, leave it for about half an hour so it gets really hot.

Roll out your pizzas to your desired thickness ... for me that's very thin... and top as per usual.


Quick Tomato sauce

Ingredients

Olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely sliced
A small bunch of fresh basil, leaves picked and torn
1 x 400g tins of good-quality, whole plum tomatoes
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method

Place a large non-stick frying pan on the heat and pour in a couple of generous glugs of olive oil. Add the garlic, shake the pan around a bit and, once the garlic begins to colour lightly, add the basil and the tomatoes. Using the back of a wooden spoon, mush and squash the tomatoes as much as you can.

Season the sauce with salt and pepper. As soon as it comes to the boil, remove the pan from the heat. Now blitz it quickly with a hand blender to give it some thickness

Pour the sauce back into the pan, bring to the boil, then turn the heat down and simmer for 5 minutes to concentrate the flavours. Allow to cool

If you want you can store the sauce in a clean jar in the fridge – it’ll keep for a week or so. Also great to freeze in batches or even in an ice cube tray, so you can defrost exactly the amount you need. But to be honest, it’s so quick to make, you might as well make it on the day you need it.

Comments

GB said…
Thanks for the recipe. I'm doing a bunch of research over the holiday to perfect pizza. I'll give it a shot.
Thanks for posting this recipe; I left my Alice Waters cookbook on the other side of the Pond, and I agree with you that her recipe is great. So, you list "unbleached white flour" twice - is the 1/2 one meant to be wheat flour?
Cheers,
Emily
Barry said…
Hi
the half cup of flour goes in the first mix with the yeast.
It is actually meant to be rye flour which I can never get hold of so I usualy use italian tipo 00 flour that you can get from Waitrose ... or I just use plain organic bread flour.
hope this helps

Barry
Karen said…
yes, like Emily, I didn't have my Alice Water's cookbook (gave it to my son when he moved out a few weeks ago)and was glad to find the pizza dough recipe on your blog . This recipe WORKS, and has given me confidence to try breadbaking again.
Anonymous said…
I love this recipe! I also don't have my Alice Water's cookbook and was so happy to find this. This is the best pizza dough I have ever made by far.
Thank you.
juliancait said…
Barry, You can get rye flour at Whole Foods or most health food stores.

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